Fox News personalities are echoing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign, which claimed that the FBI would not have been able to “review 650,000 emails in eight days” to cast doubt on the bureau’s probe into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. However, experts point out that the FBI is able to do so using technology such as “automated search and filtering tools.”

Writing at The Daily Beast, Wayne Barrett takes note of the pipeline between conservative FBI agents (both active and retired) and Fox News. Figures like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and current Donald Trump surrogate, as well as James Kallstrom, the former head of the New York City FBI office, have appeared on the network and used its air to amplify the grievances of these agents.

Barrett reports that Kallstrom has “been on an anti-Comey romp for months, most often on Fox, where he’s called the Clintons as a ‘crime family.’” Appearing on The Kelly File, Kallstrom claimed that agents involved in the Clinton investigation were “P.O.’d” that President Obama said the Clinton emails weren’t a national security issue and compared the statement to “someone driving another nail in the coffin of the criminal justice system.”

After FBI Director James Comey cleared Clinton of wrongdoing in the email investigation, Kallstrom made more appearances on Fox News and alleged that agents “both on the job and off the job” were “worried about the reputation of the agency they love.” Kallstrom again used Fox as a platform for his views, endorsing Trump on Stuart Varney’s Fox Business show, describing Clinton as a “pathological liar.”

Kallstrom responded to Comey’s letter to congressional leaders telling them that the agency would be reviewing newly discovered emails with yet another Fox appearance.

Kallstrom’s victory tour this weekend also included an appearance on Fox with former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, another close associate of Pataki’s, who complained on air that she’d been the victim in 2006 when word emerged that the U.S attorney and FBI were probing her in the midst of a race she eventually lost to Andrew Cuomo to become New York Attorney General.

Her concern about the political impact of law enforcement leaks, though, didn’t extend to Democrat Hillary Clinton. “He couldn’t hold on to this any longer,” Kallstrom said of Comey. “Who knows, maybe the locals would’ve done it,” he added, a reference to leaks that elicited glee from Pirro, who echoed: “New York City, that’s my thing!”

[…]

He declined to explain why Megyn Kelly stated as a fact that he was in contact with agents “involved” in the case. Asked in a follow up email if he suggested or encouraged any particular actions in his exchanges with active agents, Kallstrom replied: “No.”

“Now, I’m supporting Comey,” Kallstrom told me on the phone, adding that he can’t do or say anything else before election day. “He can’t characterize” what the bureau has from the Weiner emails. “The FBI can’t say anything without having all the information,” Kallstrom contends, just after telling me he supports the FBI director who’s under fire for having done just that.

[..]

It’s clear enough, though, why when Comey sent a note to FBI staff on Friday explaining his decision to inform Congress about the renewed Clinton probe, the scoop about that internal memo went to Fox News. Why Kallstrom gets booked to talked about the Clintons a “crime family.” Why Clinton Cash author Peter Schweitzer, caught in a web of Breitbart and Trump conflicts, would announce on Fox that he was asked in August to sit down with New York office FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation (with The New York Times reporting this week that the agents were relying largely on his discredited work when they pitched a fullscale probe).

Fox is the pipeline for the fifth column inside the bureau, a battalion that says it’s doing God’s work, chasing justice against those who are obstructing it, while, in fact, it’s doing GOP work, even on the eve of a presidential election.

Lou Dobbs has claimed on his Fox Business show that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is the victim of a “globalist” conspiracy by the “Mormon mafia,” and he has derided former GOP nominee Mitt Romney for refusing to support Trump, saying maybe it’s because he is a Mormon and “getting visions.”

Dobbs tweeted last night that Evan McMullin -- an independent candidate for president who is Mormon and polling strongly in Utah, which has a large Mormon population -- is “nothing but a Globalist, Romney and Mormon Mafia Tool.” Dobbs’ bigoted reference to a “Mormon Mafia” was widely derided.

Dobbs hasn’t expressed such bigotry only on Twitter. He highlighted the “Mormon mafia” as one of the many foes Trump is “contending against” in his presidential run during the October 9 edition of his Fox Business show:

During the August 11 edition of his Fox Business show, he claimed that “the Mormon church appears to be involved” in Trump’s weakness in Utah polls. He explained: “There is a globalist view, a perspective on the part of the Mormon church. Mitt Romney has addressed it, others. Again, now we've got an independent candidate who is himself a Mormon. These are not coincidences. These appear to be an organized and energetic effort to disrupt Donald Trump's candidacy.”

During the segment, Fox contributor Eboni Williams claimed that in a speech, Trump had been “really not so thinly veiling a callout to kind of the Mormon mafia,” which Williams said included Romney and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Watch:

On his May 26 broadcast, Dobbs referenced Romney’s refusal to support Trump and said, “What is wrong with this man? I mean, is he getting -- he's Mormon, right? ... I mean, is he getting visions or something that nobody else can dial up?”

In 2006, Dobbs criticized “the Mormon church” for purportedly seeking to encourage “as many of Mexico's citizens as they possibly could attract to the state of Utah, irrespective of the cost to taxpayers,” drawing a denial from the church. Dobbs left CNN in 2009 following months of controversy over his promotion of the racist conspiracy that President Obama was not born in the United States, but he was hired by Fox Business soon after.

In the 2016 election cycle, right-wing media have spread misinformation about the Democratic position on abortion access by alleging that the party supports so-called “partial-birth” abortions, often invoking the term as a description of an abortion that takes place in the final months or “moments” of pregnancy. In reality, “partial-birth” abortion is a term coined by anti-choice groups to vilify and stigmatize individuals who elect to have an abortion. Here is what the media should know about this common anti-choice myth and why media figures should not deploy it.

Right-wing media figures advanced Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s suggestion that Ford Motor Company was sending Michigan auto jobs to Mexico despite the fact that Ford CEO Mark Fields said Trump’s innuendo was “absolutely not true” and that “zero” jobs are being exported from Michigan. The auto giant is retooling its Michigan Assembly Plant to focus exclusively on large, profitable trucks and SUVs while reallocating production of less profitable small cars to Mexico in response to changing consumer preferences in the United States.

Media figures and outlets have repeatedly pushed the myth, or allowed Donald Trump to push the myth, that he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. There is no evidence to support this claim and February reporting from BuzzFeed News showed Trump voiced support “for invading Iraq” in 2002 and termed it a "tremendous success" after the invasion began.

New York radio host Mark Simone, a longtime friend of GOP presidential front runner Donald Trump, has used his show to shill for Trump and defend him from criticism on his radio show and during guest appearances on television. Independent of his support for Trump, Simone has also attacked immigrants, minorities, and Fox News host Megyn Kelly.

Right-wing media outlets are parroting the attacks of an anti-LGBTQ hate group on Connecticut’s openly gay comptroller, Kevin Lembo. Lembo recently sent the American Family Association (AFA) a letter asking the group to submit written documentation certifying it complies with the nondiscrimination regulations governing the Connecticut State Employee Campaign for Charitable Giving (CSEC), which allows Connecticut State employees to contribute to qualifying non-profit charities through payroll deductions. Lembo’s office has since been “flooded” with emails and phone calls from AFA supporters.